Transfer protocols for downloading files from serving computers (servers) to client computers (clients) via computer networks such as the Internet are well known in the art. Two commonly used transfer protocols include the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) and the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). Generally speaking, in order to download a file, a client establishes a single data transfer link with a server during a file transfer session through which the contents of the file is transmitted from the server to the client.
Various file transfer protocols include the ability to begin downloading a file from a point other than the start of the file simply by instructing the server to begin transmitting the file from a specified byte offset. This has led to the development of file transfer software that is able to resume a download where the data transfer link has been broken in the middle of a download. The download is simply continued from the point at which the download stopped.
This ability to download a file in sections has led to the development of file transfer protocols in which multiple data transfer links are established with one or more servers where different portions of a single file, or duplicates of the file, are downloaded via the different data transfer links and reassembled at the client. This generally results in a file being downloaded to a client faster due to the greater cumulative throughput of multiple data transfer links with one or more servers as compared with that of a single data transfer link with one server. Unfortunately, in their current configuration, such protocols are not suited for downloading multimedia files that are to be played as they are being downloaded, rather than only after they are downloaded in their entirety and reassembled.